


unguibus et rostro

by for_within_the_hollow_crown



Series: drift back to me (I’ll do the same) [5]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Mentions of PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 12:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11380515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/for_within_the_hollow_crown/pseuds/for_within_the_hollow_crown
Summary: "I'm not leaving you on your own, unless you ask me to. Do you want to be on your own, Will?""No.""Good," she replied, and then lay down, curled up in fetal position with her head resting on his lap.It didn't seem like the most comfortable of positions yet Jemma didn't breathe a word. She just lay there, so precious and alive, silent company in the late hours of the evening, as the rest of the world already appeared to be sleeping. For the longest time all there was was their regular breathing and the storm outside, time ticked away by the clock in the corner, thunder rumbling outside and lightning exploding, its light filtering through the window blinds and illuminating the room. Will couldn't tell if Jemma had indeed fallen asleep or if she was there as wide awake as he was."On Christmas Eve," he started, not really know if he was talking to her or to himself. "As night fell, we started to hear the Germans singing in their trenches. It was Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht, though it took us some time to figure that out. Some of the boys just suggested to join in and that we did. There was such stillness and quiet and none of us really knew what to make of it."





	unguibus et rostro

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd.

 

[London 1915]

 

It was the feeling of fingertips gently caressing his forehead that woke him completely. The storm outside and the noise of the rain hitting against the window had longed reached him through his dreams and nightmares, creating a disorientating yet pleasant dichotomy. It was raining cats and dogs, but the cold was not settling in his bones nor was he drenched at all, and being indoors, warm and safe under the covers; the sound itself - that mix of clattering of window blinds, of water against glass, and of wind howling - had gotten louder and louder, slowly replacing the memories of screams and bullets, grounding him back to reality and making the panic and fear slowly fade away.

He was home, in the safety of his own bedroom, far away from the no man's land and the trenches. And yet, this acknowledgment of reality, encouraged by the feeling of the fresh and clean bed linen against his skin, wasn't entirely enough to reduce the sheer terror of this being nothing but a dream, from which awaked he'd find himself back in the trenches, with the long awaited three days leave nothing but a distant point in a distant future.

"Welcome back," said Jemma, her voice appearing distant and muffled.

Will opened his eyes and turned around, letting out a groan in protest of the dull ache in his back, and squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again as he waited for his sight to adjust to the light that came from the lamp on the bedside table and let the room come into focus. Darkness still prevailed, the lamp was hardly enough to illuminate anything the entire room, all objects still hidden- an entire world reduced to nothing but the space in close proximity to the source of light. How familiar it was and yet hardly anything was as he remembered it, the colours brighter and the edges sharper, even Jemma sitting on the corner of the bed was a welcomed sight that, however, had little in common of what he had months earlier left behind.

"What time is it?" His words came out mumbled rather than a distinct and neatly articulated flow of sounds, they appeared glued in his mouth, filling it and mixing with the metallic taste of sleep that still lingered on his tongue.

There it was again, Jemma's touch on his skin - light and still filled with the same hesitancy of the times gone by, that uncertainty mixed with an attempt of reassurance and fondness. Fingertips run on skin, until she placed her palm on his cheek and he leaned into it despite the fact that her skin was terribly cold. Apart from his sister's hug back at the station, it was the first contact he had had in months - warm, real, normal - and although he wouldn't want to take in any further than that, the existence of it was welcomed and more than enough.

"A little after nine. When did you get here?"

"Twelve? Or sometime after anyway."

"You should have told me, I'd have picked you up."

"Lavinia." He coughed. "Lavinia drove me here, there was no need to bother you."

Jemma looked at him the same way she had looked at him at the train station the morning of his departure, when she had pointed out that he had not woken her upon leaving and that she had wanted to wish him goodbye. Let down, surprised, yet there was nothing accusingly on her side for in the end could she really blame him? Everything had happened so quickly that they had been left behind, unable to catch up. Their engagement, war breaking out, their marriage, him leaving - they had never really had the chance to explore their relationship and put things clear once and for all. All they had was an idea and their friendship, the mutual decision that he would live his life and she would love hers, but the exploration and the drawing of lines of what was allowed and what wasn't, of what was wanted and what wasn't, had never really been defined.

His sister had reproached him about it. Back at the station her question _are we waiting for Jemma or?_ was much more an accusation rather than a sentence formulated out of sheer curiosity, and the exasperate roll of eyes, which Lavinia always claimed to have learned from him, had been indication enough that what she meant was something along the lines of _you're not even trying_. And maybe he wasn't, but how much did his sister know about it in first place? It was easy on her side to judge them both, to side eye him at Jemma's absence, but how could she know how it felt to act backed up by the agreement of him living his life and her living hers and thus never knowing what to do?

"I wouldn't have minded, but I guess it's done now."

"Jemma?"

"Yes?"

"Your hands feel like two little ice buckets," he said as he pushed himself up in sitting position, his back leaning against the backrest and giving her a little more space to sit on.

"They do, don't they?" She laughed, eyes squeezed shut and features softening, her face brightening up as laughter - free and crystal clear - filled the space between them. "Did I wake you? It wasn't my intention, really, I just wanted to check on you."

"Not really, no. When did you come back?"

"Just now. I wasn't sure I'd find you here already and there was still work to be done back at _The Sketch_ before the paper goes on print tomorrow. Did you have something to eat?"

"Not yet, no. The original plan was to eat, take a bath, and sleep; but by the time I had actually taken a bath, I was sleeping on my feet and I just collapsed. The bed just seemed too inviting to resist."

"Will, how do you feel?"

Empty, drained, detached as if he was looking at his life from far away. Jemma looked at him inquisitively and he looked away. "Jolly well fine," he finally answered.

It was a lie and they both knew it, he had stopped feeling fine somewhere around November and the increasing awareness that the war was not a Blitzkrieg like everyone expected had only caused the feeling to increase; until one day he had realized that the desolation had almost eaten him away entirely. How distant in time his past self appeared to be, that softness long lost, that innocence and idealism, the recklessness and eagerness, all replaced by nothing much at all. His life before the war, like that of many others, was nothing but a dream and real life was now all desolation and horror, darkness creeping up and no way out. How did Will Daniels feel? Lost like many of others, with no hope and no way to die either.

It felt like self preservation not telling her the truth, a vain attempt to keep two worlds completely separated from each other. There was the war, with the trenches and the no man's land, and then there was London, with his friends and family, even with Jemma; they couldn't touch for one would have inevitably stained the other and he couldn't allow it for his own sake and sanity.

"Did you have dinner?" he asked, cutting her off from any chance of adding anything else.

"Some sandwiches back at work," she paused. "I think I'm going to turn in for the night."

Will nodded and watched her leave, following her with his gaze until she exited the room and turned left out of his sight, and then got up himself. He walked towards the kitchen, slowly, dragging his bare feet on the solid and cold floor enjoying every second of it - his pajama trousers hung loosely on his hips, the ends of the ribbon fell down and moved around every time he took a step.

A hot and steaming cup of tea and two slices of bread covered with marmalade, that was his dinner; there wasn't much else and the appetite he had felt upon his arrival had diminished and replaced by the thought that perhaps he couldn't even keep richer food in him. Not that it mattered, food was food and anything would have been better and more welcomed than what he was used to - eating it sitting on the sofa in his own living room was satisfaction enough.

"I thought you wanted to go to sleep," he said as Jemma appeared in front of him.

She had let her hair down, it hang on the sides of her face, framing it, the tips of it still wet from the rain; and she was wearing her pajama, a grey cable knit jumper on top of it. The sleeves, Will noticed, had been folded more than once and still covered her hands. And she looked at him awkwardly and once again with hesitation as if she was still trying to decide whether to stay or not.

"The last time I checked one could also sleep on a sofa. Scoop a little to the left, will you?" Jemma sat down and looked at him. "I'm not leaving you on your own, unless you ask me to. Do you want to be on your own, Will?"

"No."

"Good," she replied, and then lied down curled up in fetal position, with her head resting on his lap.

It didn't seem like the most comfortable of positions yet Jemma didn't breathe a word. She just lay there, so precious and alive, silent company in the late hours of the evening, as the rest of the world already appeared to be sleeping. For the longest time all there was, was their regular breathing and the storm outside, time ticked away by the clock in the corner, thunder rumbling outside and lightning exploding, its light filtering through the window blinds and illuminating the room. Will couldn't tell if Jemma had indeed fallen asleep or if she was there as wide awake as he was.

"On Christmas Eve," he started, not really know if he was talking to her or to himself. "As night fell, we started to hear the Germans singing in their trenches. It was _Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht,_ though it took us some time to figure that out. Some of the boys just suggested to join in and that we did. There was such stillness and quiet and none of us really knew what to make of it. And as day broke out, we just- we began to pop out heads over the side and jump in quickly in case they shot. But they didn't shoot. And then we saw a German doing the same. There were still shots to be heard in the background, distant, people who didn't want an armistice, but we walked out and the officers on both sides arranged a forty eight hours long armistice."

The British khaki and the German grey, meeting in the middle of the no man's land. Unique and very rare, an experience of a lifetime, he had learned later that it had not been the only place where it had happened, just as he had come to know that in other place the armistice had not happened at all. They had gathered and mingled together, knowing that the enemy was sharing the same misery, exchanging greeting and gifts, talking about nothing and everything, irrelevant matters exposed in broken German or broken English. And how young some of them were, all of them, regardless of age, knowing that what they were doing - talking to the enemy - was very close to commit treason, making them all risk to be court martialed and executed. Not that it had stopped them.

"There was even a football match," he added.

"What a marvelously wonderful yet strange thing to happen," Jemma replied in a whisper.

And what a great display of humanity in the heat of war and in the most dreadful occasion, he wanted to say. Those forty eight hours were  a memory he often thought about, especially when his own humanity came into question, when he felt it slip away quicker and quicker. He hold onto it, fought for it, unguibus et rostro one might say, and that sense of normality, that moment of the war having stopped even for a little - it meant everything.

He felt the grasp of Jemma's hand around his leg getting tighter, in reassurance and comfort probably for there was no way of escaping the truth of what had come afterwards. The truce had not lasted, of course it hadn't, the fear of being court martialed had prevailed and had left them no way out - deserting was out of the question, the only way forwards going back to fight. And yet there had been some confusion, some hope, for some people had asked whether the armistice would go on and had been shot dead in the head. Picking up shooting with any kind of vigor had been immensely difficult, now facing people who weren't as unknown as before, and Will remembered his own hesitation that had lasted little, but had been there.

What a quick way back to feeling empty, what a quick and rushed awakening to reality seeing his commander officer shooting one of the men who had asked about the armistice dead - a clean bullet at least, something they all prayed for.

Jemma sat upright and faced him, tentatively stretching her hand out until her palm was resting on his chest, right where his heart was. "This," she said. "This part of you, don't destroy it. Don't let them destroy it."

Her words came out as a plea, her own desperation mirroring his.

"It might be gone already." His voice broke on the last syllables.

She shook her head, back and forth as if refusing to believe his words, as if refusing to listen to them. And how easy it must have been for her, when she knew nothing about it; how naive Jemma appeared to be, in all her forwardness and intelligence she still could know how it felt to wake up in the morning and hoping for the situation to end one way or the other.

"No, no. It's not."

He felt her hand at the back of his neck, playing with his hair, and then - little by little, with infinite and gentle delegations as if waiting for him to tell her to stop - Jemma straddled him, arms around his back, holding him close. She took one of his hands and guided it around her waist, encouraging him to mirror her actions, and to hold her close. Until they were nothing but an entanglement of limbs and he had his head buried in the crook of her neck, breathing in her scent, his tears wetting her skin as they clung to each other in desperation.

"I know there's not much between us, Will, but this is real. This is real and this is now, and maybe I can't fix things and I sure as hell am not someone who redeems nature from its general course, but I'm here. There's no boundaries and no lines that we better should not cross, we alone shape our relationship in whatever direction it suits us best, but know that I am not going anywhere. Not now. Not ever."

 

**Author's Note:**

> The Christmas Truce was a real thing that happened, you can read about it [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_truce)
> 
> Comments are appreciated.


End file.
